A Bluetooth Tampon Will Soon Exist

Every innovation in the health world right now seems to center on a Bluetooth-enabled partner app. Some of these products are kind of awesome, like the Philips Sonicare smart toothbrush that can tell you where to focus your brushing. Or the no-touch Thermo thermometer from Withings (a forehead scan reads the temp—genius for a sleeping baby). But there are also some health products that probably, um, didn’t need to be digitized. Case-in-point: the data-reading tampon that My.Flow is developing. (Yes, a "smart tampon"). Here's how it works:

The tl;dr version: the tampon features a superlong string—braided with an implant-grade surgical-steel wire—that attaches to a belt clip where the Bluetooth chip lives. (So to answer a very common question: no, computer chips are not going inside you). Then, via an app, you get discreet notifications when your tampon is at max capacity, to prevent one of those feminine-care horror stories. But I'm not so sure about a string that goes from your tampon to your waistband (never mind what you'll do if you’re wearing a dress)—that seems like an accident waiting to happen. And for the most part, I've been using tampons long enough to know when one is nearly full, so I'm okay not getting even more push notifications during that time of the month. Bottom line: even in our tracker-obsessed culture, I’m pretty sure I’d prefer that my tampons stay dumb.